Use Internet Assets to Help You Get Into College

Internet Assets That Help You Get to College

by Bob Collins, Editor Student Athlete magazine

Here are some of our most useful tools that help SASF readers get to college, and on the team ... many with full scholarships.

1. GOOGLE: Today's most powerful search engine ranks websites you request by weighing the number of links to that site. Over 500 clubs link to our site because it contains free articles for visitors and useful college information, Try this (include quotes):

GOOGLE: "student athlete magazine"

Use GOOGLE for digging back into the history of your target coach and school ... researching events that are not on the website or in the media guide. Remember, college is not a four year decision, but a forty year decision. Get it right.

2. POWER RATINGS: analyzes and ranks every college soccer team by combining win/loss with opponent strength. See: www.soccerratings.com Use it to follow your favorites, but MUCH more important, use it to identify good colleges with weak teams. Quick test ... fish among colleges in the middle of the rankings, selecting the best schools with the worst ranking. WHY? Because those teams will recruit you, and if they consider you to be an impact player, will offer scholarship money. Why? Because they, too, want to be in the top 20% and need your help. Makes sense to us!

3. NEWSLETTER: We now send 50,000 free Email newsletters every month. They contain samples from future publications and are the forerunners of our new on-line magazine. As a non-profit group we use technology to reduce our costs, which enables us to reach more families,
worldwide, within our limited budget.

How to get yours and help your entire team? Email us the Email address list your team, parents and coach and we will send everyone free newsletters. Interesting statistic: female players are 3X more likely to share our information with their teammates than male players are!

4. COLLEGE WEBSITES: After using our unique publications to isolate your "best fit" list of schools, visit their web sites to confirm or remove them. Start with the coaching staff bios to learn how they think and coach. Scrutinize their rosters to compare player qualifications with your own and to forecast openings graduation will create.

Example - a recruitable high school keeper studying a college roster containing three freshmen goalies who are all-everything, is advised to look elsewhere for playing time and money.

Inspect colleges in their conference. Check out their opponents scores and stats to confirm your selection and maybe even add them to your "best fit" list. For sure, learning that an arch rival is ALSO on your "best fit" list, will start both coaches' competitive juices flowing and could trigger a bidding war. Naughty but nice!

5. EMAILING COACHES: An asset not to be abused. College coaches are now comfortable with Email, using it to supplement a traditional paper file containing cover letter, resume and references.

Invest your time in selecting colleges and teams who need you, not saturation bombing everyone with .edu in their address, hoping something will stick. That SPAM makes you unpopular.

Our readers identify "best fit" colleges who earnestly recruit them in response to their paper presentation and use Email to update the coach's file and signal changes in your plans.

Fortunately, the NCAA is unable to control coach to player Email communication, and has apparently abandoned efforts to include Email in their minefield of recruiting violations plaguing our overburdened college coaches.

6. PDF FORMATTED FILES: We were pleasantly surprised when college coaches embraced Adobe PDF (Portable Data Format) files. Think of PDF as a free, color copy and fax machine that makes all computers and all desk top software compatible. Popular word processors like Microsoft Word contain an option to output your resume (characters and images) in PDF. Reading a PDF document is just as easy with free downloadable software from www.adobe.com Another advantage of PDF is that it cannot easily be changed by anyone but the author, so if your stats and addresses are safe.

7. www.Student-Athlete.NET - since 1991 our non-profit group of concerned college coaches, parents, and EUROSPORT have helped over 50,000 serious student athletes get to college, and on the team ... many with full scholarships. Website contains reprintable articles, unique publications written by college coaches, a scholarships calendar and free fund raising
system powered by SOCCER MOMS. Visit often.

If you found this article useful, please subscribe to our magazine, the Student Athlete, and purchase our 3 books, 18 pamphlets and video which comprise our College Scholarships SYSTEM that has helped over 10,000 players. All are available at: http://www.student-athlete.net

This article provided courtesy of:

Bob Collins, Editor
Student Athlete Scholarships Foundation
theinstep@aol.com
(561) 498-1546
www.student-athlete.net
GOOGLE: "student athlete magazine"

Student Athlete Scholarships Foundation
PMB 133, 5030 Champion Blvd., G-6
Boca Raton, FL 33496-2496
Tel: (800)506-7257
e-mail: SAmagazine@msn.com
NET: http://www.student-athlete.net